Vanderbilt Basketball: 12 candidates to replace Jerry Stackhouse as Head Coach

Kyle Smith

Vanderbilt is an SEC program with potential for the future if they can get the right coach to Nashville. The league around them continues to get tougher, meaning the next head coach has quite the task ahead. The focus then turns to Smith, who has already engineered tough comebacks for multiple schools, including this very season at a different power conference school.

Smith was born in El Paso, played his college ball in New York at Hamilton, and began his coaching career at San Diego. He had long coaching stints with those Toreros and under Randy Bennett at Saint Mary’s before getting his first head coaching job at Columbia. While he’s yet to lead a team to the Big Dance (that’ll change this season), he transformed the Lions before three very good years back in the WCC at San Francisco. He was brought to Washington State in 2019 and has the Cougars playing their best basketball in over a decade, already with 23 wins this season.

With Washington State abandoned by the Pac-12, Smith could be open to a promotion and a new job. He doesn’t have specific experience in Tennessee or in the SEC, but has been successful everywhere he’s gone, inheriting three straight programs in rough shape. Another big question is Vanderbilt’s interest when considering that it took fourteen years for Smith to lead a team to the Big Dance. They won’t endure another long period without postseason success after five empty years under Stackhouse.